North Korea urged not to lose 'historic opportunity'

South Korea today urged North Korea to resolve a stand-off over its nuclear ambitions, describing ongoing international nuclear disarmament talks in Beijing as a historic opportunity to end the dispute.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young issued the plea at inter-Korean Cabinet-level talks in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

The ministerial meeting coincided with six-country negotiations in Beijing aimed at getting the North to give up its nuclear weapons programme. That meeting, which involves the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia, resumed yesterday after more than a month’s recess, but initial indications were not positive.

“I think (the North) should not lose this chance … (it) must seize on this historic opportunity,” Chung told the meeting, referring to the Beijing talks.

Chung’s North Korean counterpart, Kwon Ho Ung, a senior Cabinet counsellor, avoided a direct response to the appeal, saying only that the two Koreas should end their national division that he said was caused by “outside forces,” the reports said.

The main snag in the Beijing talks was North Korea’s insistence on its right to a civilian nuclear programme. The US maintains that North Korea must give up all nuclear programmes, peaceful or otherwise, as it has a record of breaching promises not to pursue atomic weapons.

“We explained (to the North) that the Korean Peninsula must be denuclearised,” Kim Chun-sig, one of the South Korean delegates, told reporters after the 80-minute talks in Pyongyang, according to the pool reports.

North Korea cites an acute energy shortage in arguing that it needs a civilian nuclear program. In July, South Korea offered to provide the North with 2,000 megawatts of power if the communist state gives up its nuclear programme, but the proposal failed to impress Pyongyang.

Kim said his delegation “explained that our electricity provision proposal is an idea that can break the current impasse and urged the North to give it serious consideration while stressing that there must be progress” in the Beijing talks.

The South also proposed a second inter-Korean defence ministers’ meeting to discuss ways of easing military tension across their heavily fortified border and a project to determine the fate of South Korean prisoners of war and abductees believed to be alive in the North, Kim said, according to pool reports.

The first inter-Korean defence ministers’ talks were held on South Korea’s Jeju Island in 2000.

Other South Korean proposals include having the two Koreas permanently station liaison officials in their respective capitals and creating a joint programme to train economic officials, the pool reports said.

The South has raised the liaison office proposal since the 1980s, but the North has never accepted it.

The North’s delegation presented its own demands, including an end to joint South Korea-US military drills, Kim said.

North Korea has stepped up its criticism of such exercises, calling them preparations to invade it. The North cited the most recent set of exercises as a reason for delaying the six-party talks earlier this month.

Later in the day, officials met to work out differences in their respective joint statement drafts, but reports said the meeting produced little headway.

The southern delegation then made a sightseeing visit to a Buddhist temple in Pyongyang. After dinner, they were also scheduled to view a performance at a sports stadium of North Korea’s “mass games,” a colourful show that utilises tens of thousands of performers.

Cabinet-level talks between the two sides have in the past focused on economic and humanitarian projects with little discussion of political issues, such as reducing military tension across their heavily fortified border.

South Korea now believes it is time to tackle the sensitive issue of bringing permanent peace on the peninsula. Before leaving for the North yesterday, Chung and other South Korean officials said they would raise the issue as a priority.

The two Koreas are still technically at war following the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, although exchanges between the two sides have flourished since a historic summit of their leaders in 2000.

The Cabinet-level talks – currently in their 16th session – are the highest-level regular dialogue channel between the two Koreas.